Focus on the Fallacy

Oy, this will make your head hurt…mainly because you won’t be able to handle the degree of stupidity involved in this argument. This is a video from Focus on the Patriarchy that makes an analogy: gay marriage is as unnatural and impossible as gravity pushing objects upward, and trying to claim that trying to legislate equality is as silly as trying to legislate the behavior of objects in a gravitational field.

And this is from an organization that has tried to legislate creationism into truth.

(via Jen)

What your teachers are doing

Almost all of your public school teachers have sex. Most of them enjoy it and do it repeatedly, even.

Many of your public school teachers vote for the Democratic party. Some are conservative Republicans. Some are Communists.

Some of your public school teachers are atheists. Or Episcopalians. Or Baptists. Or Scientologists.

All of your public school teachers go home at the end of the school day and have private lives, where they do things that really aren’t at all relevant to your 8 year old daughter, your 15 year old son. That you pay taxes to cover their salaries for doing their jobs during work hours does not entitle you to control the entirety of their lives.

All of your public school teachers have a history. Almost all of them have masturbated. Many of them have smoked marijuana. Almost all of them have dated; most of them have danced. Some of them are gay. Some of them are heterosexual. Almost all of them have private kinks which you don’t know about, because they don’t practice them in public, let alone when they’re doing their jobs. Some of them have been sex workers.

And you know what? All of them can be fired or blacklisted by local prudes on school boards or the school administration. Teachers: you don’t get to be human. This outrages me.

When I was in eighth grade, one of the best teachers I ever had taught me geometry. Mr Anderson was fat; he sweated excessively. He always wore baggy slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, and he had a crew cut. And he was ferocious. He would yell at bad students and tell them to work harder, and if he caught you being inattentive in class he’d throw an eraser at you. Those students mocked him mercilessly, behind his back. He was also passionate about the subject — I can still see him in my mind’s eye excitedly making that chalk fly across the board, talking excitedly about a proof, giggling at how cool a result was.

Every year he rewarded the best of his students with an invitation to his house for a formal party, with snacks and Nehi soda. He was single and weird, but there was no worry about impropriety — there’d be a score of us there, who would all be treated politely as adults, which was mind-blowing right there. He’d play music for us: opera and show tunes.

Show tunes. He adored Ethel Merman, and sometimes even in class he’d start humming something from his beloved musicals.

He made the adults uncomfortable, and you can guess what kinds of rumors the school jocks spread about him. The people who didn’t care that he was a fantastic, enthusiastic math teacher who taught students self-respect and to love math only saw a strange man who didn’t fit in, who was odd, who fit certain stereotypes, and who obviously could not be trusted.

So one year, poof, he was gone. Dismissed. The best damned math teacher they had, sent away on the heels of a sordid campaign of bigoted whispers.

Even now, it stirs a little outrage in me, that teachers get judged not by the quality of their work and their positive effects on their students, but how well they fit the conventions of the most closed-minded members of the community, by people, even, who despise good educations that raise kids to think independently.

Melissa Petro, the teacher who was open and unashamed of her past as a sex worker, couldn’t be more different, superficially, than a fat flamboyant math teacher. But they do share something in common: both were pilloried by an intolerant public and cowardly administrators over perfectly ordinary and human traits that just didn’t match an unrealistic expectation of teachers as bloodless mannequins of perfect propriety.

Heroes

Here’s a pair of brave women.

The villains here are, unfortunately, all men — men who think they can use and abuse women. It makes me embarrassed for my sex … and it embarrasses me further that there will no doubt be whiny little half-men complaining in the comments of this article. Could you all try to make that prediction false?

Enlightened professions perpetuate problems

As a member of the professoriate, I like to think that we are egalitarian and do our very best to correct the social inequities that are so prevalent outside of our relatively benevolent, enlightened institutions. Only…not. It looks like women get screwed over in academia, too.

The gender gap in faculty pay cannot be explained completely by the long careers of male faculty members, the relative productivity of faculty members, or where male and female faculty members tend to work — even if those and other factors are part of the picture, according to research being released this week at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association.

When all such factors are accounted for, women earn on average 6.9 percent less than do men in similar situations in higher education, says the paper, by Laura Meyers, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington. The finding could be significant because many colleges have explained gender gaps by pointing out that the senior ranks of the professoriate are still dominated by people who were rising through the ranks in periods of overt sexism and so are lopsidedly male, or that men are more likely than women to teach in certain fields that pay especially well.

Maybe the disparity is because equality is only just now beginning to percolate upwards from the new faculty? Nope, they corrected for that. Is it because we have more women in the low-paying sociology departments than we do in the higher paying computer science departments? No, they corrected for that. Is it because women are less able to do the work and are too busy gossiping about babies and needlepoint to do the work? No, they corrected for that.

Darn. I guess the simple fact of the matter is that we’re paying women less than they deserve. From which the important, obvious lesson to be learned is that we ought to hire more women, because we’re getting equal work for cheap.

Perhaps I should mention that to our hiring committees.

I wonder why there are relatively few women engineers?

You would think Canadian universities would be particularly sensitive on the issue of discrimination against women scientists and engineers—it is, after all, where the École Polytechnique murders occurred in 1989 (major trigger warning! That is the coroners report, containing a detailed, dispassionate description of a man hunting down and butchering women), one of the most horrendous crimes against women in recent history, in which a gunman singled out women engineering students for execution, killing 14.

During this time, Lépine moved a little closer to the group of 9 girls who were standing together at the back of the classroom, with no possible exit. He said to them: “Do you know why you are there.” One of the girls answered “No”. He replied: “I am fighting feminism.” The student who had spoken added: “We are not feminists, I have never fought against men.” He immediately started firing on the group, from left to right.

Now it’s clear that most men are not murderous, woman-hating lunatics like Lépine; the very remote possibility that a deranged maniac might murder them for the act of being intelligent is not going to discourage most women, since it is such an unlikely event. But what is going to hurt is the constant, grinding obtuseness of non-murderous male engineering students and a culture that belittles feminist concerns. That is the mind-killer; we can lock up all the guns and issue all the bullet-proof vests we want, but that isn’t going to correct the blithe, gutless privilege of some individuals.

The University of Waterloo is an excellent university with a prestigious reputation, but lately there have been a few chilling incidents. Someone has been anonymously plastering posters on campus.

i-f7367051c3446a76efde10cbfe6ae465-curie_poster.jpeg

It’s ahistorical nonsense, of course. Marie Curie was not the inventor of the atom bomb, men are not blameless for the creation and use of it, and Curie was not the one great mind in all of womankind. But it has to be frightening and oppressive to be aware of another kook working himself up to a woman-hating fury on the campus. The administration and police are working hard to track this fellow down, although I also get the impression that what spurred the university to take action was more that the guy impersonated the university president in email than that he’s creating a bad atmosphere for women.

But let’s set that aside, too. Let’s pretend that these relatively rare anti-feminist fringe monsters aren’t a major contributor to the discouragement of women in science. Even if these creatures disappeared from our culture, never to appear again, there is something even more insidious: the belittling attitude of their peers.

Here’s how one engineering student at the university reacted to the concerns of a woman student.

Really Sherlock? UW is a male dominated campus, I wonder why… oh, let’s see, UW is in the top for Engineering, Math, and CS, given that most girls doesn’t want to give the effort and sacrifice needed to go through the Engineering or Math program at UW, you are going to bitch and cry that the university is male dominated? Really? So if you want a female dominated campus, try “Bryn Mawr College”.

You have no right to bitch that the campus is too male dominated, when there are literally no girls in the Engineer or Math faculty, even though there are scholarships and extra benefits given to females that are in the Math faculty.

Very, very few women have been shot by a male gunman, but virtually every single one of them has regularly encountered men like the privileged scumbag who made that comment. If you want to know why an engineering school can be a “male dominated campus,” look to the people who feel that women don’t work as hard, aren’t as capable, don’t belong in a science and engineering world, and that male privilege is an earned status. And let’s also not forget that it requires this kind of culture to allow misogynist extremists to flourish.

Tear the posters down and find the culprit, but don’t forget that those are only symptoms of a miasma of seriously screwed up attitudes.

The Minnesota Anti-Texan Act of 2011

I would like to propose a new law for consideration by our legislature, which I am calling The Minnesota Anti-Texan Act of 2011. I need to work on the formal language for it, but I can give the gist of it here.

If any person within the boundaries of the fine state of Minnesota exhibits any of the signifiers of a Texas origin — wearing a cowboy hat, for instance, or Big Hair, or having a drawl, or chewing tobacco — you can shoot them. You catch someone listening to Clint Black on the radio, bang, blow them away, you’ve got a justifiable defense. Someone says “sheeeeeee-it” instead of “uff-da,” you’ve got cause: kill them on the spot. It’s perfectly fair to hang out at the airport waiting for incoming flights from Houston, and following visitors outside the terminal to group hunts, too; it might even be a new source of revenue for local guides.

To be fair, after the bill is passed I support a waiting period of one year before it’s implemented, so that there’s time to spread the news and give Texans warning. They will be allowed to enter the state, as long as they respect our traditions: no leather clothing, just layers. The only hats allowed are stocking caps or tuques. They should study the movie Fargo to learn the lingo, and listening to lots of Prairie Home Companion will help them understand the local mores. We’re not so much against Texans as we are against blatant Texans, and as long as they show appropriate shame for their nature, and try hard to cover up, we’ll do our best to tolerate them.

Wait, you may be thinking, this isn’t justice: a death sentence for wearing the wrong kind of headware? No one deserves to suffer for trivial fashion choices, or because a bunch of yankees have prejudices about who someone is. But I think it’s only right that if someone takes pride in being a dumb cracker, and inflames our senses by flaunting their inherent Texish character, then they deserve what’s coming to them.

And we’re just following Texas’ lead.

A meeting Thursday night that was billed as a way to discuss concerns some have about the investigation into a series of alleged sexual assaults on an 11-year-old girl turned into a forum that many used to blame the girl police contend is the victim of heinous attacks.

Many who attended the meeting said they supported the group of men and boys who have been charged in the case. Supporters didn’t claim that the men and boys did not have sex with the young girl; instead they blamed the girl for the way she dressed or claimed she must have lied about her age — accusations that have drawn strong responses from those who note an 11-year-old cannot consent to sex and that it doesn’t matter how she was dressed.

See? My proposed Minnesota law is hallowed by good ol’ boy tradition. Texans are clearly just asking for it.

Oh, wait…there’s that remark about how lying about her age would have excused the gang rape, and this:

“She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened. That’s a child,” Oscar Carter, 56, who is related to an uncle of one 16-year-old charged in the case, said in an interview earlier in the week. “Somebody should have said what we are doing is wrong.”

So it would have been OK if the girl was 17, the age of consent in Texas? I guess I’ll have to put a clause in my law that says it’s only OK to murder Texans or people who look like Texans or people who imply they are Texan with subtle behaviors if they are over 17.

I am a just and fair person, after all.

And remember, if nobody tells you that what you are doing is wrong, it’s not your fault if you rape or murder someone. You can’t possibly detect the evil that you’re doing unless someone else reminds you. If you’re a Texan.

It’s a tough look to pull off

Admit it. You all have wanted to see Daniel Craig in a dress.

That’s a fantastically effective spot, and also…Craig looks damned good in that dress.

Another interesting thing is that the MRAs are enraged by it. I did think this comment was amusing:

Craig’s Bond is faggy anyway.
Sean Connery not only would’ve NEVER posed for these drag pics, he would’ve told the gay publicist to “sod off and suck my knob, mate.”
Then punched him.

So the MRA masculine ideal is violence and angrily demanding gay sex? I am not surprised.

(Warning: if you follow that link, it contains links to the Spearhead, a revealingly named blog which is the MRA version of Stormfront. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Not unless you really want to see how contemptible male entitlement can be.)

And it’s all your fault!

Several readers have noticed that lately we’ve had a plague of whiny, entitled, childish Men’s Rights Activists in the comments. They’re usually clueless and petty and annoying…and now I’ve found out why. And the source of my information is unimpeachable: it’s Whirled Nut Daily.

According to Kay Hymowitz, whose new book, “Manning Up,” was featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal in February, “legions of frustrated young women” are dealing with a new crisis in America: modern men refuse to grow up.

It appears the 21st-century male is living a kind of extended adolescence. In the past, it was assumed men would receive a high-school diploma or college degree, then get married and settle down to the responsibilities of work and family life. Today, young men “hang out in a novel sort of limbo,” keeping adulthood at a distance as they enjoy a lifestyle that demands few, if any, obligations.

Exactly! Well, not all men…but the spoiled ones who demand that everyone respect their privileges and pay attention to their problems, which are the only problems of any importance, certainly are infantile. And they’re always turning around and blaming their shortcomings on someone else, especially the women.

Of course, since it is WND, you know exactly where it is going.

The question is why — and how — did this happen? And the answer is simple: feminism.

Why have some men turned into whiny bitches who blame women for everything? Easy. Blame the women.

I don’t think I’ll bother to read Ms. Hymowitz’s book.

It’s open season on women and doctors out there!

The economy sucks, so why are Republicans making such obnoxious noises over abortion and birth control lately? (That was an entirely rhetorical question, and it’s obvious why: they’ve got no solutions other than feeding the rich some more, so they’re carrying out a massive campaign of distraction.) Look what Nebraska is poised to do!

Last week, South Dakota’s legislature shelved a bill, introduced by Republican state Rep. Phil Jensen, which would have allowed the use of the “justifiable homicide” defense for killings intended to prevent harm to a fetus. Now a nearly identical bill is being considered in neighboring Nebraska, where on Wednesday the state legislature held a hearing on the measure.

The legislation, LB 232, was introduced by state Sen. Mark Christensen, a devout Christian and die-hard abortion foe who is opposed to the prodedure even in the case of rape. Unlike its South Dakota counterpart, which would have allowed only a pregnant woman, her husband, her parents, or her children to commit “justifiable homicide” in defense of her fetus, the Nebraska bill would apply to any third party.

Nebraska: even more fundamentally deranged than South Dakota!

It’s probably not fair to pick on Nebraska, though. It seems women are fair game even in Canada. A judge just let a rapist off because the victim was asking for it, in the coded language that only rapists can read.

Judge Dewar listed several reasons for this misinterpretation [that the victim consented], including that the victim and her friend were wearing tube tops, high heels and makeup; that the two had implied they might want to go skinny-dipping in a lake nearby and that the circumstances of their encounter with Mr. Rhodes and his friend were “inviting.”

That’s it? That’s all it takes? Except for the skinny-dipping part, then women have been consenting to have sex with me surprisingly frequently, and I’ve been missing all the signals and all the opportunities.

I’m thinking that maybe women just need to move out of the middle of the continent altogether. It doesn’t seem to be a very friendly place.